The long term objective of this proposal is to explore the interactions of self-esteem, socially threatening situations, and the effects of alcohol on self-evaluations. Specifically it seeks to explore alcohol s reinforcing effects in protecting individuals low in self-esteem from experiencing esteem threatening emotions, a process which might explain some pathological alcohol use pathways. Furthermore, this proposal seeks to more fully explore attention allocation, appraisal disruption, and stress response dampening as mediating processes of the obtained effects. The three proposed experiments utilize three alcohol dosing conditions (expect alcohol/get alcohol (.05 g/dl target BAL)), (expect placebo/get placebo), and (expect alcohol/get placebo), in order to tease apart the pharmacological effects of alcohol versus expectancies about alcohol s effects. Subjects in all experiments will be exposed to either an intellectual or socially threatening situation and asked to evaluate themselves in comparison to others.